Rose Abernathy

Game programmer & indie developer

These days I'm totally focused on games, but I used to draw comics as well. My webcomic, Club Love, ran for over 2 years and garnered over 800 fans. Club Love was a very interesting experience and is still the largest creative project I've ever completed. In this post I write a bit about the process of making CL, what I would do differently, and so on.

When I was a senior in high school, my friend Emily and I decided to make a webcomic together. We came up with the concept of Club Love and the main characters off the top of our heads; Cora was a typical shoujo manga protagonist, and Club Love was our best idea for a group of superheroes that didn't actually do any fighting.

For a month or so Emily wrote Club Love and I drew it. The comics I drew then were quite a bit different from the comics that ended up in the final CL. Here's an example:

We both lost interest in the comic after a while - so CL faded away just like the other webcomics I tried. But the next summer, I decided to start CL up again and fix the things that prevented me from sticking with it last time: 1) I would work alone so I didn't have to wait for anyone else to do their part and 2) I would draw the comics as simply as possible so that I could get the comics done quickly. I eventually changed my mind on both of these, but at least they got me started again. So signed up for an account on Comic Genesis and started posting comics like this one.

I should mention that at that point I had very little planned out. I knew the basic personality of the characters but didn't give them any more depth. (I think that the shallow characterization is a big problem with CL, especially the lack of distinction between Oliver and Lilly.) I knew the plot of the first mission, but not what I would do after that or how long the comic would go on. I didn't think through what CL's powers would be good for, or whether Club Love was really being helpful at all. (I tried to deal with some of these issues, like why CL didn't fight crime, later in the comic.) I didn't even know what Cora's power would be until it was almost time to reveal it.

Was all this a bad thing? Yes, because holes showed up as I went on. But if you're trying to make a webcomic, especially for the first time, I don't think it's a bad idea to just jump in without fully planning everything, rely on cliche characters, or whatever - just as long as you get something done. I like to think of CL as my practice webcomic. It could definitely be improved, but hey - people still read it.

So that's the beginning of Club Love - now for the end. As I went along, I kept improving the artwork - unfortunately the result was that each strip took longer and longer to create.

Around this time I was getting excited about making games, so I decided to make one chapter of Club Love into a game (which you can play here.) I like the idea of a serialized game, and I'm happy with how the game turned out - but it was definitely a mistake to try to fit the game into the middle of CL. I made the classic newbie mistake of way underestimating the amount of time it would take to develop the game, and it ended up taking almost 6 months.

After the game, I was pretty sick of spending time on Club Love. I still liked the characters and was glad that people were reading the comic, but each strip just took too long and it started to seem like a chore. CL wasn't popular enough to make any money, and it's not directly relevant to school or my future career. Nevertheless, I knew I had to finish what I started and bring the comic to a proper close.

So - 3 years and 254 pages later, Club Love finally came to an end! Overall, I'm glad that I was able to accomplish such a large project and that I was able to brighten people's days a bit. I have a lot of ideas for other comics, but I'm more interested in focusing on games now. If you like making comics but have never gotten a webcomic started, consider my example. I jumped in with no plan and poor art, and ended with over 800 fans. Thanks for everyone who read the comic and I wish you luck with your own projects.